This is not an issue of incapable hardware. That's proven both by the fact that there's no reason why Google couldn't have kept the minimum system requirements the same from 2.2 to 5, and the fact that plenty of manufacturers were already abandoning their 2.2 shit before 2.3 came out, let alone anything actually more advanced!

FYI, you'd be (in a similar sense) "broadcasting" your location when using your home landline too (i.e., the fact that you're at home). But they still need a fucking warrant for that!

The Android fragmentation boogeyman.

What nobody's ever explained to my satisfaction is why I should give a flying f*ck. As far as I can see "fragmentation" is simply the result of users and developers not all being forced to upgrade to the latest and greatest when the platform vendor demands it. This is actually a *good* thing.

It means I can find a $40 Android tablet running KitKat, which is perfectly fine for things I want to use a $40 tablet for. I'm out of the developer business now, but I still dabble to keep up with developments, and far as I can see the Google tools do a really nice job of allowing developers to target a range of platforms and still look up to date on the latest and greatest. So I don't have to shut out people who bought a smartphone last year if I want to use Material Design (which is cartoony for my taste but does a nice job setting out consistent UI guidelines).

If this is fragmentation hell, all I can say is come on in, the the lava is fine. Sure it would be *nice* if the adoption rate for the latest and greatest was higher, but as a long time user and developer I have to say that not being pushed over the upgrade cliff on the platform vendor's orders is nice too.

Yep. With least cost routing, dude.

No, that's for after I've sold them all ThickNet. Then I'll have them bying STP-A cable by the spool to run to the MAO. Maybe I'll package a whole concentrator rack inside a vintage Frigidaire unit so that anytime anyone wants a Pabst they'll see you're more retro than thou.

Yes indeed. Opportunity has to stand as one of NASA's greatest post-Apollo accomplishments.

Alright, here are some of my experiences with Comcast's evilness (not including the "normal" and endemic DNS hijacking, Bittorrent and Netflix throttling, and secret data cap issues that Slashdot has reported on, of course):

1. I called up Comcast to negotiate my rate, and the customer service rep offered me $19.99/month (for I think 20Mbps internet). When I got my first bill, it was for $60+. I called to complain, and (after escalating to a manager) was basically told that they did not offer such a rate, that I was a liar for claiming to have been offered such a rate, and that they refuse to go listen to their own recording of the phone call (which would have proven that I was correct). Once I filed the BBB complaint, I was contacted by somebody higher up in Comcast (some kind of VP... it was over a year ago and I'm going by memory) who said they'd reviewed the recording of the call and would honor the rate for one year. Then, after 6 months, they jacked up the rate again, so I filed a second BBB complaint to get them to finish honoring their original agreement.

2. After that previous rate had ended, I changed my plan to a $39.99 plan that included Internet + basic cable TV (because Comcast is so desperate to inflate their TV subscriber numbers that they often offer that plan cheaper than Internet by itself). I refused to let them give me a cable box, opting instead to use my digital-cable ready TV's built-in QAM tuner instead. Then my PERFECTLY-GOOD built-in tuner stopped working, because Comcast decided to start encrypting the signal (which is nothing more or less than a blatant power and money grab, to force people to use set-top boxes and drive business for 'on demand'). Of course, Comcast will tell you the government forced them to do it -- trying to conflate it with the over-the-air digital transition -- but that's a big fat fucking lie. Long story short, I ended up filing the following FCC complaint:

Per FCC 12-126, Comcast is required to provide free set-top-boxes (STBs) OR CABLECARDS (CCs) to those affected by basic-tier encryption. However, Comcast appears to have a systematic corporate policy of making it as difficult as possible to obtain a CC, including lying to customers.

1. Comcast began encrypting WGTV weeks BEFORE sending the notice required by Title 47 SS. 76.630 (a)(1)(vi)

2. Service call technician would not admit that encryption caused the WGTV outage but only told me to use a STB

3. I called to request equipment compatible with my HTPC (without specifically asking for a CC). The rep insisted that Comcast did not support non-TV equipment, and that the only thing available was a STB

4. Comcast mailed me an unsolicited and unwanted STB

5. I called to request a CC (and return the STB). Several reps and supervisors insisted variously that a) unlike STBs, CCs could not be mailed (CC users are 2nd-class), or b) there would be a monthly fee (variously $5 or $10) for using a CC

Once I eventually obtained a CableCard -- which required physically going to a Comcast office, and was such a painful experience that I started yelling at the service rep and almost got arrested by the county sheriff's deputy that Comcast apparently employs to keep the peace because their customer service is apparently THAT BAD! -- I found out that having the CableCard actually entitled me to a discount vs. having the "free" set-top box. In other words, 1. the "free" set-top box isn't actually free, and 2. Comcast overcharged me for the several months between signing up for the plan and getting the CableCard registered on my account.

Because everyone knows you're selling a myth that it "happens constantly." That's why you can't point to a list of examples of it happening "constantly" and instead go right for the race card in order to distract.

Predicting the future is hard and often just look. But you might want to learn an new paradigm. E.g. functional programming. If you haven't done, it will be eye opening. Or a different environment, esp. if you have only programmed in a MS environment look at non-MS languages and IDEs. People who can work in both are in the biggest demand. Or network databses vs relational databases (though you can build a network schema in a RDB, since a network is a relation), etc.

Look for differences and analogies and analogies between analogies.

The summary conflates two papers, a review paper in Science which summarizes the state of knowledge about fracking the Marcellus Shale (Vidic et al. 2013), and a study of an individual incident published this month in PNAS in which researcher purport to have found a single instance of minor contamination from a fracking well (Llewellyn et al. 2015). Neither paper is particularly damning or inflammatory, so at first blush it's not immediately obvious why the fracking PR flacks have gone to DEFCON 3 on this. The key is to read the review paper first. This is almost always the best way to start because review papers are supposed to give a full and balanced overview of the current state of scientific knowledge on a topic. TL;DR, I know, but stick with me for a few paragraphs and I think I can make the problem clear.

Vidic paints a rather favorable picture of the fracking industry's response to problems that have arisen during the fracking boom in the Marcellus shale. It absolves them of any responsibility for the infamous "burning tapwater" we've all seen in Youtube videos. It states they have been quick to respond to wastewater leaks and well blowouts before contamination could spread. It says the industry has redesigned wells in response to concerns that they might leak fracking water as they pass through the aquifer. And it says that fracking water that returns to the surface ("flowback") is treated and re-used for more fracking -- an expensive environmental "best practice".

Vidic does raise some important concerns, however, and the most important is this. At present recycling flowback into more fracking water is practical because production is booming. But at some point production will level off and begin to decline, and when that happens the industry will be producing more flowback than it can use economically. In Texas, where fracking was pioneered, flowback was disposed of in deep wells -- a process not without its drawbacks, but better than leaving the contaminated water on the surface. Pennsylvania doesn't have enough disposal capacity to handle today's flowback, which helps make recycling fracking water attractive at the present time.

We now have enough context to understand Llewellyn, and why Llewellyn is so upsetting to the industry. Llewellyn's paper documents a single instance of minor contamination which matched the chemical fingerprint of flowback from a nearby well. This contamination was well below a level that would be cause for any concern. Llewellyn concludes the most likely cause was a small spill from the flowback holding pit, although it can't rule out the possibility that the contamination occurred inside the well. Taken with the picture Vidic paints of an industry that is generally on top of stuff like this, the occurrence of a single mishap with negligible consequences is hardly damning. So why has the fracking industry unleashed its flying PR monkeys on this?

Because the fracking industry apparently has made no plans for when the day comes it can no longer recycle all the flowback it uses, and it doesn't want the public to think about that.

It would be sensible for them to prepare for the flowback problem now on the upswing of the boom, for the same reason the industry has been able to be so responsive to date: these are good times for the industry in the Marcellus Shale. They're flush. Although preparing for the problem now would be expensive, it wouldn't slow the boom appreciably, and it would add jobs. But... if the industry can kick the flowback can far enough down the road, we'll have to ask it to fix the problem while production and probably the regional economy is in decline. Doing something about the problem then will cost jobs and require money nobody will have.

  So if the industry isn't forced to do something about the looming problem soon, it will become politically if not financially impossible to make them do that ever. That's why the industry is allergic to the very mention that surface contamination from flowback is even possible. In the scheme of things the Llwewllyn incident is negligible, but when fracking starts producing more waste than the industry can use surface contamination is going to become a lot more common and a lot worse.

Vidic raises some other serious long term concerns. Nobody knows where most of the fracking water used goes. The geology of the area is complex enough, but it is further complicated by many old gas and oil wells, quite a few of which are not fully documented. Contamination of the aquifer is a quite plausible possibility that needs further scientific study -- study that has been hindered by lack of research funding and industry transparency. More research might lay this concern to bed; or it may require changes in the industry's operation. We don't know. But we do know that some day we'll have a wastewater problem, and if we wait to address that it will be politically impossible to do anything about.

CITATIONS

Vidic, R. D., et al. "Impact of shale gas development on regional water quality." Science 340.6134 (2013): 1235009.

Garth T. Llewellyn, Frank Dorman, J. L. Westland, D. Yoxtheimer, Paul Grieve, Todd Sowers, E. Humston-Fulmer, and Susan L. Brantley. "Evaluating a groundwater supply contamination incident attributed to Marcellus Shale gas development." PNAS 2015 ; published ahead of print May 4, 2015,

He overstated it a little bit: if you're dealing drugs in 'cyberspace,' they'll just arrest you. It's only 'meatspace' drug dealers that get shot.

I see. You live inside a bad television episode? How many hacker apartment door breakdowns followed by "hailstorms of bullets" can you cite from this month, here in this country of over 300,000,000 people? Please be specific.

The one arena that is is not contentious in is in the climatology community. Yes, there are a very small number of skeptics, but then again there are a small number of skeptics in the biology community who insist on some variant of Creationism (or Intelligent Design, as they like to market it these days). But all in all, the contention among scientists is over degree, and not over whether or not human-caused CO2 emissions are radically altering global climate.

Because industrialists and mining firms have never ever dumped toxic chemicals that ended up in drinking water before. No fucking sirreee, they're fucking angels and we should just let them do whatever the fuck they want,,, because MONEY!!!!

Well great. I wager I can produce really cheap toys by manufacturing out of substandard materials. Sure, the materials might be toxic, might even be highly flammable, but hey, all that fucking counts is profits! We should just let companies fuck everything and everyone up because MONEY!!!! We should let them lie and distort and attack anyone who questions because MONEY!!!! Fuck every single human being on earth, because MONEY!!!!